I'm lazy, now that I'm at the pinnacle of power, she said to herself. But I must keep the wheels turning. I must know what is going on.
She got up and dressed in the simple tunic she had always worn.
“Is she really going to wear that?”
“It was the style when she ruled actively. A lot of heavy sleepers do that—it keeps a touch of familiarity around them.”
“But, Nab, it makes her look like a relic of the Pleistocene.”
“It keeps her happy. We want her to be happy.”
The first item of business was the reports. The ministers had to make the reports personally, and the new ministers who had been appointed since her last waking were on trial as she talked to them. The minister of fleets, the minister of armies, and the minister of peace were first. From them she learned about the war.
“With whom,” she said, “are we at war?”
“We aren't at war,” said the minister of armies innocently.
“Your budget has doubled, sir, and the number of conscripts is also more than twice what it was yesterday. That's a lot of change for five years. And don't give me any merde about inflation. Whom, my dear friends, are we fighting?”
They glanced at each other, fury barely concealed. It was the minister of fleets who answered, affecting contempt for his fellows. “We didn't want to bother you with it. It's just a border conflict. The governor of Sedgway rebelled a while ago, and he's managed to attract some support. We'll have it under control in a few years.”
She sneered. “Some minister of fleets you are. How do you get something under control in a few years when it takes twenty or thirty years to get from here to there even in our light ships?”
The minister of fleets had nothing to say. The minister of armies intervened. “We meant, of course, a few years after the fleets' arrival.”
“Just a border conflict? Then why double the army?”
It wasn't that large before.
“I conquered— my husband conquered the known galaxy with a tenth as many soldiers as you have, sir. We considered it a rather large force. I think you're lying to me, gentlemen. I think you're trying to hide the fact that this war is more serious than you thought.”
They protested. But even their doctored-up figures couldn't hide the truth from her.
Nab laughed. “I told them not to lie. Everyone thinks he can outwit a middle-aged woman who sleeps most of the time, but the bitch is far too clever for them. Wager you five that she fires them.”
“Can she do that?”
“She can. Add does. It's the only power left to her, and these fools who think they can make their reports without following my advice always end up losing their jobs.”
Dent looked puzzled. “But Nab, when she fires them, why don't they just stay on the job and send an assistant to her?”
“It was tried once, before you were born, my boy. She was able to discover in only three questions that the assistant wasn't used to giving orders like a minister; it took only three questions more to know that she had been defrauded. She ordered the poor sap who tried to fool her brought into her chamber, and she sentenced both him and his assistant to death for treason.”
“You're joking.”
“To tell you how much of a joke it was, it took two hours to convince her that she ought not to shoot them herself. She kept insisting that she was going to make sure it was done right.”
“What happened to them?”
“They were dropped from high somec levels and sent out to administer sectors on nearby planets.”
“Couldn't even stay on Capitol?”
“She insisted.”
“But then—then she does rule!”
“Like hell she does.”
The minister of colonization was next to last. He was new in his job, and frightened to death. He, at least, had believed in Nab's warnings.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Who are you trying to impress? One thing I hate is cheerful morning greetings. Sit down. Give me your report.”
His hand was trembling when he gave her the report. She read it, quickly but thoroughly, and turned to him with an eyebrow raised. “Who thought of this cockamamy scheme?”
“Well—” he began.
“Well? What's well?”
“It's a continuing program.”
“'Continuing'?”
“I thought you knew about this from prior reports.”
“I do know about it. A unique way of handling war. Outcolonize the bastards. Great plan. It hasn't shown up on any reports until now, fool! Now, who thought of it!”
“I really don't know,” he said miserably.
She laughed. “What a prize you are. A cabinet full of ninnies, and you are the worst. Who told you about the program?”
He looked uncomfortable. “The assistant minister of colonization, Mother.”
“Name?”
“Doon. Abner Doon.”
“Get out of here and tell the chancellor I want to meet this Abner Doon.”
The minister of colonization got up and left.
Mother stayed in her chair, looking gloomily at the walls Things were slipping out of her control. She could feel it. Last waking there had been little hints. A touch of smugness. This time they had tried to lie to her several times.
They needed shaking up. I'll shake them up, she decided. And if it's necessary, I'll stay awake two days. Or even a week. The thought was exhilarating. To stay awake for days at a time the prospect was exciting.
“Bring me a girl,” she said. “A girl about sixteen. I need to talk to someone who will understand.”
“Your cue, Hannah,” Dent said. Hannah looked nervous. “Don't worry, kid. She's not a pervert or anything. She just wants to talk. Just remember, like Nab said, don't lie. Don't lie about anything.”
“Hurry up. She's waiting,” Nab interrupted.
The girl left the control room and passed through the hall to the door. She knocked softly.
“Come in,” Mother said gently. “Come in.”
The girl was lovely, her, hair red and sweet and long, her manner confused and shy.
“Come here, girl. What's your name?”
“Hannah.”
And they began to converse. A strange conversation, to Hannah, who knew only the gossip of the younger members of upper-crust Capitol society. The middle-aged woman kept insisting on reminiscing, and Hannah didn't know what to say. Soon, how ever, she realized that there was no need to say much at all. She had only to listen and occasionally express interest.
And after a while the interest did not have to be feigned. Mother was a relic of an earlier time, a strange time when there were trees on Capitol and the planet was named Crove.
“Are you a virgin?” asked Mother.
Don't lie, Hannah remembered. “No.”
“Whom did you give it up to?”
What does it matter? She doesn't know him. “An artist. His name is Fritz.”
“Is he good?”
“Everything he does is beautiful. His pieces sell for—”
“I meant in bed.”
Hannah blushed. “It was just the once. I wasn't very good. He was kind.”
“Kind!” Mother snorted. “Kind. Who asks a man to be kind?”
“I do,” Hannah said defiantly.
“A man who is kind is in control of himself, my dear. You wasted a golden opportunity. I gave my virginity to Selvock. Ancient history to you, girl, but it wasn't all that long ago to me. I was a calculating little bitch even then. I knew that whoever I gave it to would be in my debt. And when I saw Selvock Gray I knew immediately that he was the man I wanted to have owe me.”
“I took him out riding horses. You don't know horses, there aren't any on Capitol anymore, more's the pity. After a few kilometers I made him take off the saddles so we could ride bareback. And after a few kilometers more I made him take off his clothes and I took off mine. There's nothing like riding a horse bareback, in the nude. And
then—I can't believe I did this—I forced my horse to trot. Men don't enjoy trotting even when they have stirrups, but without stirrups and without clothes, the trotting was agony for dear Selvock. Damn near castrated the poor man. But he was too proud to say anything. Just gripped the horse, turning white with every jolt. And finally I gave in and let the horse run full out.”
“Like flying. And every movement of the horse's muscles under your crotch is like a lover. When we stopped we were covered with horse sweat but he was so aroused he couldn't stand it and he took me in the gravel on the edge of a cliff. There were cliffs on Crove then. I wasn't very good, being a novice, but I knew what I was doing. I'd got him so hot he didn't notice I wasn't helping him much. And I bled all over the place. Very impressive. He was incredibly gentle with me. Led the horses so I could ride sideways, and we found our clothes and made love again before we went home. He never left me. Found plenty of women, of course, but he always came back to me.”
It was an incredible world, to Hannah, where one could mount an animal and ride for kilometers without meeting anyone, and have sex on a cliff.
“Didn't the gravel hurt? Isn't gravel little rocks?”
“Hurt like hell. I was picking stones out of my back for days.” Mother laughed. “You gave yourself too easily. You could have held out for more.”
Hannah looked wistful. “There aren't any conquerors available these days.”
“Don't fool yourself, girl. Hannah, I mean. There are more conquerors than you know.”
And they talked for another hour, and then Mother remembered there was work to do, and sent the girl away.
• • •
“Good job, Hannah. Like a trouper.”
“It wasn't bad,” the girl said. “I like her.”
“She's a nice old lady.” Dent laughed.
“She is,” Hannah said defensively.
Nab looked her in the eye. “She's personally murdered more than a score of men. And arranged for the deaths of hundreds of others. Not counting wars.”
Hannah looked angry. “Then they deserved to die!”
Nab smiled. “She still weaves the old webs, doesn't she? She caught you well. It doesn't matter. You're on somec now, three years early. Enjoy yourself. Only one woman in every five years gets to meet Mother. And you can't tell anyone about it.”
“I know,” she said. And then, inexplicably, she cried. Perhaps because she had come to love Mother in that hour of conversation. Or perhaps because there were no horses for her to ride, and her first time had been in her parents' bedroom when they were away for an evening. Stolen, not freely taken in sunlight on a cliff. She wondered what it was like to be at a cliff. She imagined standing on top, looking down. But it was so far below her. Meters and meters down. In her imagination she shied away. Cliffs were for ancient times.
“So you are Abner Doon.”
He nodded. His hand did not tremble. He merely looked at her steadily. His eyes looked deep. She was a little disturbed. She was not used to being looked at so easily. She could almost imagine that his gaze was friendly.
“I understand you thought of the clever plan to colonize planets behind the enemy's holdings.”
Abner smiled. “It seemed more productive than wiping out the human race.”
“A war fought by outbuilding the enemy. I must say, the idea is novel.” She leaned her head against her hand, wondering why she didn't want to go to the attack with this man. Perhaps because she liked him. But she knew herself better than that, knew that she hadn't attacked because she wasn't yet sure where his weakness was. “Tell me, Abner, how extensive the enemy's holdings are.”
“About a third of the settled planets,” Doon answered.
• • •
Dent was startled, then furious. “He told her! He just told her! The chancellor's going to have his head.”
Nab only smiled. “No one's going to have his head. I don't know how he figured it out, but he and that girl, Hannah—they both understand the bitch. The rule is be accurate, even when you lie.”
He's undoing everything!
No, Dent. The other ministers undid themselves. Why should he shoot himself down along with them? The shrimp is smarter than I thought.
She kept Doon with her for fifteen minutes—unheard of, when full ministers rarely got an audience of longer than ten. And the chancellor was outside cooling his heels.
Mr. Doon, how can you bear being so incredibly short?
Doon was finally taken by surprise, and she felt a small sense of victory.
“Short?” he asked. “Yes, I suppose I am. Well, it isn't anything I have control over. So I don't think about it.”
“What do you have control over?”
“The assignments sections of the ministry of colonization,” he answered.
She laughed. “That isn't a complete list, is it, Mr. Doon?”
He cocked his head. “Do you really want an answer to that?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Doon, I do.”
“But I won't give an answer, Mother. Not here.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are two men in the control room listening to everything we say and recording everything we do. I'll talk freely to you when there isn't an audience.”
“I'll command them to stop listening.”
Doon smiled.
“Oh. I see. I may reign, but I don't always rule, is that what you're saying? Well, we'll see about that. Lead me to the control room.”
Doon got up, and she followed him out of the room.
• • •
“Nab! Nab, he's bringing her here! What do we do?”
“Just act natural, Dent. Try not to throw up on the looper.”
The door to the control room opened, and Doon ushered Mother into the room. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said.
“Good afternoon, Mother. I'm Nab, and this petrified mass of terror is my assistant, Dent.”
“So you're the ones who listen in and answer my every request.”
“As much as possible, of course.” Nab was the image of confidence.
“Monitors. Television! How quaint!”
“It was decided hololoops wouldn't be appropriate.”
“Bullshit, Nab,” Mother said sweetly. “This is a looper right here.”
“Just for the historical record. No one ever watches it.”
“I'm glad to know how closely I'm observed. I'll be more careful how I arrange my body in the morning.” She turned to Doon. “Is there anywhere that we can meet where the birds won't be watching from the trees?”
“Actually,” Doon answered, “I have the only place on Crove where the birds do watch from the trees.”
She looked shocked. “Real ones?”
“Complete with droppings. You have to watch where you step.”
Her voice was husky with eagerness. “Lead me! Take me there!” And she whirled on Nab and Dent. “And you two. I want this looper out of here. You can listen and you can watch, but there is to be no permanent record. Do you understand?”
Nab agreed pleasantly. “It'll be done before you return.”
She sneered at him. “You have no intention of doing it, Nab. Do you think I'm a fool?” And she went out the other door, which Doon was holding open.
When the door swung shut, Dent gagged and retched into a wastebasket. Nab watched unconcernedly. “You haven't learned anything, have you, Dent? She's nothing to be afraid of.”
Dent only shook his head and wiped his lips. Stomach acid burned in his sinuses and throat.
“Go get the technicians. We have to hook the looper up somewhere else. And have some phony spots ripped out of the wall, so that workmen will be repairing when they get in. It has to look like the lasers have been removed. Hurry it up, boy!”
Dent stopped at the door. “What are they going to do to this Doon?”
“Nothing. Mother likes him. We'll simply use him to keep her happy later on. The man's a nonentity.”
Mother c
ould sense Doon's increasing pleasure as they went (under heavy guard) through corridors that had been cleared before them, until finally they were at a door where Doon told the Little Boys to go wait elsewhere.
“This had better be good, Doon.” Mother said, knowing from the way he acted that it would be good.
“It'll be worth the walk. Though you used to walk much farther than this in your childhood,” he said.
“Kilometers and kilometers,” she said. “What a wonderful word. It even sounds like going up hills and down them again. A traveling word. Kilometers. Show me this place where the birds sing from the trees.”
And Doon opened the door.
She walked in briskly, then slowed, then stopped. And after a moment she began walking briskly among the trees, pausing only to strip off her shoes and dig her bare toes into the grass and the dirt. A bird fluttered past her. A breeze spun her hair out like a fan. She laughed.
Laughing, she leaned against a tree, put her hands on the bark, slid down the tree, sat in the grass. The sun shone brightly above her.
“How did you do it? How did you hold this spot of earth? When I last touched ground like this, I was twenty, and it was one of the few parks left on Capitol!”
“It isn't real,” Doon answered. “The trees and birds and I grass are real enough, of course, but the sky is a dome and the sun is artificial. It can tan you, though.”
“I always freckled. But I said, 'Damn the freckles, I worship the sun!'”
“I know,” Doon said. “I tell everyone that this place is modeled after Garden, a planet where they restrict immigration and industry is kept to a minimum. But you know what this place really is.”
“Crove,” she said. “My grandfather's world! What this planet used to be before it was sheathed in metal like a vast chastity belt, blocking life from this place forever; oh, Doon, whatever it is you want, you can have, only let me come and spend afternoon here on every waking!”
“I'll be glad to have you come. Only you know what it means.”
“But you want something from me, anyway,” she said.
The Worthing Saga Page 43